I first had cold-brew coffee in New York during the summer of 2013, in a coffee house run by the Brooklyn Roasting Company. It was about 36°C outside, and so a glass filled to the top with ice cubes with coffee dispersed in between was an offer I couldn’t refuse.

The flavour was surprisingly smooth and tender, and at first I thought that it was because the coffee from the roasting company was good. But I have a curious nature, so I asked the barista how they achieved such a great taste. He told me that they brewed the coffee with cold water, which makes for a much smoother flavour. Cold brewed coffee apparently has about two thirds less acid, and because it’s cold it’s impossible to burn, and these two facts are the main reason for the mild flavour. The waiter also showed me how they made it – a huge linen sack filled with ground coffee, kept in a bucket overnight – and he told me how easy it would be to make it at home. So, all because of this, there is cold brewed coffee in our house whenever the temperature outside is really hot.

When I first discovered this brewing method I had not yet started running Vegetaria, so the only way to praise it was via a short post on Facebook. In the meantime, cold brewed coffee is not much of a secret anymore (it seems quite trendy here in Vienna), but just in case you have not heard of it yet, the following are some basic instructions.

There is not really much to making your own cold brew coffee. The only thing to be careful about is that the coffee grounds need to be very coarse – you can’t just use store-bought pre-ground coffee, you need to grind it yourself. If you don’t have a coffee grinder at home, you could ask at a cafe or a coffee roastery if they can grind it very coarsely for you, or maybe you can grind it yourself in the supermarket.

The first step is to make the concentrate. You don’t need to be very accurate here, as you will be diluting the concentrate later with water according to your taste. I usually fill a large clear container with ground coffee up to about 1/4 of the container size, then fill it up to the top with cold water. Let the coffee steep over night.

The next day, filter out the grounds. The liquid you have now is a concentrate that will keep in bottles in the refrigerator for several days.

To make a delicious ice coffee just fill up a glass with ice cubes and poor some of the concentrate over them. Add as much or as little water as you like (I like it with up to 50% water). This is really up to you. Enjoy!

But this is not all you can do with the coffee concentrate. Try using a little bit of the coffee concentrate together with a little bit of fruit juice concentrate syrup (I used cherry syrup), diluting the mixture with loads of water (see photos above).

But this is just one example, and the summer is long enough to try out many other variations. You could also try:

coffee concentrate + lots of water + orange or lime or lemon slices (= very refreshing)

coffee concentrate + lots of water + various spices – like a stick of cinnamon, or slightly crushed cardamom capsules, or a vanilla pod etc.